Monday, December 29, 2014

December-2014 udpate

Early December pictures

As the time for “graduation” draws
near, the missionaries get more and more excited. It is especially true for our 6 weekers. We get to know them better than those who are
here for less than 2 weeks, but we love them all.

Of course, our sister
missionaries hold a special place in our hearts.

Eventually, it is time to say
our goodbyes and pray for great success in their future.

We love them all. As you can see, they come in all shapes and
sizes and that’s the long and the short of it. Hands down, they are wonderful.

They come in various sizes and shapes.

Aproaching Christmas

Well, we are still waiting for our white Christmas to
hit, but since it is around 85 degrees every day, we don’t think that is going
to happen soon. Nevertheless, we had a
nice Christmas with our missionaries and our missionary couple friends. We will include more information and some
pictures later in this update.

No, this isn’t Walmart, but the little food store we
shop at regularly. Santa could sing
too. It was fun.

We did say our goodbyes to some of our dear
missionaries, who are ready to go into the mission field to serve the
Lord. Some of them have learned a new
language, and others have learned the basic lessons and procedures they are to
follow. Most of all, they have felt the
sweet Spirit of the Gospel in their lives and we loved being part of that.

We take them to the temple occasionally, and it is
always a nice experience for us all.
This is one of our language districts.
They have learned French and are off to their fields of labor. I had to laugh as one of the African elders
was giving a talk in Church and he said,
“The field is black and ready to harvest”.
They have a neat sense of humor as well as a sweet attitude toward
life.

They come in all shapes and colors, as you can see.We love them all.

Christmas week was very busy for us. Many of our missionaries are in the field
now. We do have our 6 week language
missionaries with us, and other non-language missionaries are coming in
regularly. Christmas was busy, even
though we didn’t have as many missionaries as we usually have. Many of them wait until after Christmas to
come into the field. Nevertheless, we
had a very busy week getting ready for our Christmas celebrations.

We invited the missionaries who are serving in the Accra
Mission, to come for a Preparation Day, at the MTC. They came in sports clothes and had a fun day
with programs and sports for the day. We
remembered that Devin Despain is serving his mission here, so we went out to
the sports field, to see if we could find him.
Sure enough, there he was. What
fun to see someone from home. He said he
will be home before us, so he can be at our homecoming. What a nice young man he is.

Elder Despain and the Malmroses.

I was asked to organize the Christmas Eve program with
the missionaries only. We already had big plans for some of the senior
missionary couples to come to the MTC on Christmas Day, so this would be our
“family” celebration with our own missionaries.

I talked with the different districts and asked them
if they would participate in the program.
They were enthused to be part of their own program. So I assigned each district a Christmas Carol
and asked them to practice it. I also
gave them some background on that particular hymn. I even had one of the elders
ask me if he and his friends could do “Oh Holy Night”. I said, “sure”. A few days later, I went around and had them
all sing for me to make sure they were ready.
They did a good job, and I thought it would turn out OK.

The night of the performance, I gave the introductory
remarks and then let each district take their turn.

There was a sweet, reverent spirit in the room for the whole program and
I was very pleased with their love and enthusiasm for the Christmas hymns. Gerald and I, along with Sister &
President Robison, sang a quartet of Silent Night, and the congregation joined
in as the closing song. I was very happy
with how it all turned out on that special night. They did so well, so we asked
them to sing again during the Christmas Day celebration with the couples.

On Christmas Day, all the couples arrived to join us
at lunch. It helped us to not be so
homesick, to be away on Christmas. They are such nice people and we really
enjoyed being with them.

Here are a few pictures
of our Christmas celebration:

We decided to wear traditional dress for the festivities.

Some of our Senior Couples Christmas Greeting

It was pot luck style, but the MTC furnished the
chicken, gravy and rice and they brought the rest.

Especially good is the homemade bread that our head
chef Margaret makes. It was yummy.

This is our cafeteria.
The elder on the right has one of the neat beaded ties they wear
here. Oh, and yes, that is the back of
my head on the left behind the elders. I
got a haircut just in time it seems.

After eating our lunch, they asked Elder Malmrose to
share memories of his father, whose birthday was 100 years ago to the day. He presented the song that his dad had played
every year that Gerald could remember.
He danced and lip synced to “My Birthday Comes On Christmas”. Everyone really had fun with his
presentation. I don’t think I have ever
heard our missionaries laugh so hard and clap so loud. This may become an annual tradition. We put
it on the blogspot for the whole world to enjoy.

Each young missionary was given a little Christmas
gift and were they pleased! They really
appreciate being remembered.

Here are some pictures of
some of the great folks we work with every day.
What beautiful smiles they have, don’t you think.

We are working very hard, but
we are enjoying it. Just so you don’t
think that we work all the time, we do occasionally get a break and do a little
sight seeing. There really are some interesting
places to go to visit here, and we hope to get a chance to see more of them, as
time goes on. Since we don’t drive here,
for many reasons, the Robisons are wonderful at taking us places. Here are a
few pictures of one of our little excursions.

Sometimes we move at a very
slow pace, but we try not to monkey around too much.

Even the restroom signs are
unique here.

They really dress up nicely
for special events here. The ladies are
usually in beautiful dresses and the men in shirts and ties or traditional
dress. These are pictures of a wedding
held at the ward building on the property.
Because of the laws here, members must be married civilly and then they
have a traditional wedding with the family only and then they may be sealed in
the temple, if they desire it.